Most big challenges are best faced with a series of interim goals.
—Dale Carnegie
So far we’ve spoken about motivating others, about the limits of negative motivation, and about the many benefits of more positive approaches. Our focus has been exclusively on how a leader can use these principles to motivate others. It should be clear, however, that leadership mastery also includes the ability to motivate yourself.
Dale Carnegie had a great deal to say about the process of self-motivation, and he very clearly identified the single most important tool for bringing this about. That tool is the creation of clear, realistic, and worthy goals. It is not exaggeration to say that goal-setting is the magic formula for optimum self-motivation. With well-defined goals, your full potential is brought into play and almost any reality-based objective can and will be achieved. In the absence of such goals, however, very little can be accomplished and most likely nothing at all.
Goals give us something to shoot for. They focus our thoughts and efforts. They also allow us to track our progress and to measure our success. So as a leader you simply must make goal-setting a top priority. You should set goals that are challenging but also achievable, and that are clear and measurable. These goals should take the form of short-term plans as well as long-term objectives. When leadership masters reach one goal, they take a moment to enjoy what they’ve achieved, but they’ve mastered the art of quickly moving on to the next objective, emboldened, strengthened, and energized by what has already been accomplished.
A dramatic example of the power of goal-setting comes from a New York City philanthropist named Eugene Lang. Like many people, Mr. Lang was not satisfied with the state of public education in his community. Unlike many people, Mr. Lang also made it an important personal goal to do something about this problem. His plan for attaining this goal included the creation of goals for the students he intended to benefit. Eugene Lang announced his plan at a graduation speech to a sixth-grade class in New York City. Statistically the children in this group had little chance of even graduating from high school, let alone going to college.
At the end of his speech, however, Mr. Lang made a stunning announcement: “For every student in this sixth-grade class who graduates from high school, I will ensure that money is available for that student to go to college: no ifs, ands, or buts.” This was goal-setting and leadership at its best. Eugene Lang had a goal and out of it came other goals for an entire group of young people. The goals were clear and powerful, but were they attainable in the failure-ridden public school system? Only time would tell. As it turned out, of the 54 students who remained in contact, more than 90 percent have high school diplomas or GED certificates, and 60 percent went to college. Of course this amazing success rate wasn’t brought about by the financial incentive alone.
Eugene Lang made sure that the students got counseling and support all along the way. Because of the one challenging goal Mr. Lang had set for himself, together with the goals it created for the students, dozens of lives were transformed. Impossible dreams were turned into tangible reality. Indeed, as best-selling author Napoleon Hill put it, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” People who set challenging but achievable goals have a solid grip on the future. They accomplish extraordinary things. They become leadership masters.
In the action steps at the end of this chapter you’ll find exercises to help you identify your short, intermediate, and long-term goals and help you measure your progress on the way. Be sure to make use of them as soon as you can.
We have stressed the importance of motivating others, and we’ve seen how realistic goal-setting is essential for leaders to motivate themselves. For the balance of this chapter we’ll look at another motivational strategy that richly deserves our attention. This is the process of mentoring: both finding a mentor and becoming one yourself.
An ancient saying tells us, “When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.” That may very well be true, but there’s another proverb that may be even older, the one that says, “Heaven helps those who themselves.” Finding a mentor and being a mentor may to some extent happen naturally over the course of a leader’s career, but the process can be greatly expedited by awareness, focus, and a bit of legwork.
It may take a bit of your time at first, but it’s time well spent and it can also be a lot of fun. Right now let’s look at what it really takes to find a mentor, or to put it another way, let’s make it very clear what that process should not involve. Finding a mentor does not mean identifying someone who’s very successful and simply trying to copy them. As the CEO of a major software company put it, “Every human being is like a snowflake or a fingerprint or a strand of DNA: We’re all unique. We’ll never find anyone exactly like us.” Finding a mentor doesn’t mean just wanting to impersonate somebody. Finding a mentor starts with looking beneath the surface to the essential truth of who people really are.
When the fit is right at that basic level, the real mentoring experience can begin. Bill Gates is one of the world’s wealthiest individuals. But let’s see what just copying the life of Bill Gates might involve. Bill Gates dropped out of college. So if you were a young person in school and you were getting a little tired of staying up late writing research papers, you might consider heading out to Silicon Valley to make your fortune. After all, that’s what Bill Gates did, and you’ve chosen him as your mentor and model.
But it’s not really that simple. Bill Gates was enrolled at Harvard University as a mathematics major. He was certainly talented in math, but it didn’t take him long to realize something very important: Other students at Harvard were significantly more talented than he was. The basic reason Gates left Harvard was not because he was in a hurry to make his fortune. It was because he had a very aggressive, competitive personality. He realized he couldn’t be the best in this arena, and he was getting tired of playing against the future Michael Jordans of the math world.
So he took his ball and went home. That’s what Bill Gates did, at about the same time as probably dozens of people you’ve never heard of, individuals who will certainly never become the richest people in the world. They were probably doing the same thing: quitting. If you decide to quit in the middle of something because, after all, that’s what Bill Gates did, you should also be aware that Bill Jones did that and he’s flipping burgers. Bill Smith also did that, and he’s bagging groceries.
So you’ve got to look very carefully at your choice of a mentor. Once the choice has been made, you’ve got to ask yourself, “Is this who I really am? Is this who I really want to be?”
In selecting a possible mentor, don’t limit yourself to people you read about in the newspaper. Do some research. Zero in on people in your industry who share your concerns and have faced the same issues you’re facing right now. The good news is, the technological revolution has made all this easier than ever before.
The World Wide Web is the greatest research instrument ever invented, and e-mail is the ideal way to contact the potential mentors you select. Don’t be shy about this. E-mails are infinitely less intrusive than phone calls and if they’re approached respectfully and politely, most successful people appreciate the opportunity to share what they’ve learned. Remember, when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear. So get ready.
While finding a mentor is essential to leadership mastery, especially at the beginning of your career, being a mentor is also hugely rewarding and beneficial as time moves along. So volunteer to teach a class in your field of expertise. Get involved with the schools you attended. Get your name out into the world by writing articles or giving talks. By doing so, you’ll make it easier for anyone who needs a mentor to find you. There are also many organizations devoted to bringing potential mentors and mentored together. Once again, the World Wide Web is a great way to research this.
There are an almost infinite number of ways to say, “I care about the community and the people in it, and I want to give my time to help.” This isn’t just altruism. As a leader and mentor there’s a great deal in it for you. Dale Carnegie understood this very well. He wrote, “If you want others to like you, if you want to help others, if you want them to achieve success just as you want success for yourself, keep this principle in mind. Become sincerely interested in other people.” And there’s no doubt that Dale Carnegie practiced what he preached.
When J. Oliver Crom, past president of Dale Carnegie & Associates, first met Dale Carnegie, he wasn’t sure what to expect. “Mr. Carnegie, I’m pleased to meet you,” Mr. Crom said. “Oh, please call me Dale,” came the reply. “Mr. Carnegie sounds so formal. I understand you were born in Alliance, Nebraska. Is that correct?” “Well, yes,” said Crom, somewhat taken aback. “Then tell me,” Dale Carnegie inquired, “do the same wonderful people live in Alliance that lived there so many years ago when I used to sell in that territory? Please tell me more about the people out there and please tell me more about yourself. It will help me, and perhaps it will help you also.”
As you might expect, this meant a lot to the young man from Nebraska. It’s simply a fact of human nature that people do best personally and professionally when they know that someone of goodwill is paying attention, when they know that person cares about them, and when they know that person is ready to help if need be. Conversely, if you feel like you’re living in a vacuum, you’re not going to be motivated to live at your best. If the Super Bowl were played in an empty stadium, there might still be a game, but the level of intensity and performance would certainly be very different.
Mentoring is a way of taking your daily challenges out of the empty stadium and into the big game. For a leader, finding a mentor and being a mentor is not just an option or a sidelight, it’s an essential component of peak performance.
Although an admired person may not always be likable, in an organizational setting, people respect and appreciate a noble executive who takes on responsibility for difficult decisions and their thorny consequences. Managers who run after fame and only claim glory are usually detected early on and kicked out sooner or later.
While a likable person may be scared to share his real thoughts and be an active group thinker, natural-born leaders will share their thoughts and are honest about the pros and cons of an issue. People admire leaders not only for their thoughtful leadership, but also their rigor and balanced care.
One must realize that people admire brave leaders who do not simply try to cover their tracks, but think about the real benefits of their decisions for the company. Selfish corporate managers who try to put their careers and their gain ahead of the corporate objectives are weeded out and disgraced over time.
Some executives are more willing than others to take responsibility for failures and take the difficult steps to alleviate the situation. Some simply flee and shift the blame. The former type make good mentors. The others may be in need of mentors themselves.
It occasionally happens that the CEO of a company will need to take the heat for actions by subordinates that he or she was entirely unaware of. This has been the case in a number of corporate meltdowns over the years. Even if the leader of a company is not personally involved, he or she must accept responsibility and address the need to implement changes. This captain of the ship mentality is the way to gain the esteem and respect of colleagues and employees. This is what winning admiration in the workplace really means.
Can anyone really like you? Can anyone really learn from you? Can you have one without the other?
The decision to fire colleagues and take responsibility for someone else’s failure is difficult. But the willingness to improve the situation and put your own neck on the line is a noble decision that many executives would simply prefer to avoid. Most would throw in the towel, disappear, and reappear a few years later, right before another major expensive scandal.
The bottom line is that people seek mentors (and leaders) who are honest and bold and adhere to higher levels of integrity. Shareholders and employees have an easier time swallowing unpleasant surprises relayed by eloquent and congenial managers. Well-explained complex projects championed by admired executives enjoy greater buy-in from stakeholders than those pushed by arrogant and obnoxious officers.
Forget the popular misleading belief about “nice guys.” Bad guys are the ones who finish last and early.
Look back at the “dot bomb” hype, the Enron collapse, and the even more recent mortgage and credit crisis. Life is a real boomerang, and people who enjoy being ruthless and make regular folks feel worthless end up tasting their own medicine down the road.
Remember “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap at Sunbeam? You may not, which should tell you something already. After he cut payroll as if there were no tomorrow, shareholders realized that the promised goods wouldn’t be delivered, and he was just as quickly out the door. Time magazine wrote in 1998: “Sunbeam’s tumbling stock price and the problems behind it spurred the company’s board to ‘Dunlap’ the man whose name means to lay off.” How ironic! And what about the executives of Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG, and all the rest?
This is not advice to let people walk all over you. Simply avoid being cruel and insensitive to the personal implications of business decisions. It’s a small world, so make sure you can sleep at night without feeling haunted by guilt.
Another thing is quite sure: Congeniality is definitely a success factor. Business leaders with daunting projects to deliver (while facing difficult economic times) had better remember that their biggest allies are the people who have to deliver the anticipated results and those who bear the brunt of the decisions made in the conference room.
Success is derived by how well these people are motivated and mentored by the executive’s bold character and compassion for those who are impacted by these executive decisions. Let’s not forget that.
One final point about mentoring deserves your close attention: Believe it or not, you don’t have to choose your mentors from people you’re able to meet or contact, or even from people who are alive. As a leader you should learn to imagine and internalize the wisdom of individuals you admire regardless of when they lived or what language they spoke. If you’re faced with pressing financial questions, read a biography of someone like Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford.
Find out what strategies and tactics helped these people rise from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of financial success. Then once you’ve learned the facts about your historical mentors, imagine what they would actually say if you were to ask them for advice about your situation. This can literally become a form of meditation, one in which you close your eyes and imagine you’re conducting a face-to-face interview with a mentor from the past.
The action steps at the end of this chapter have more information about how to go about this. The first step, though, is realizing that literally anyone can be your mentor, provided you take the time to learn the facts about their lives and the tools they used to achieve their success.
1. In creating your goals, it’s most useful to work backward. In other words, begin with very long-term objectives. Make a list of at least five goals that you would like to achieve by the end of your life. Try to make them as specific as possible. For example, don’t just write that you want to travel. List the specific destinations. Then take some time and identify at least five of your medium-term goals (taking two to ten years to accomplish), and five of your short-term goals (requiring less than two years to achieve). Once you’ve done this, set deadlines for each, and begin acting on them. Remember, success happens one step at a time.
2. Do a life review, and take note of any mentors who have positively affected you. Write their names down, along with what accomplishments you made in response to their encouragement. Then if you haven’t already, take some time to call or write to them, letting them know how much they affected your life. Expressing gratitude is a powerful way to attract even greater things into your life.
3. Take some time to meditate on a mentor. Find a comfortable place where you can sit for at least fifteen minutes undisturbed. You may wish to play some quiet, soothing music, or simply sit in silence. To start, make a list of the criteria that you are looking for in a mentor. Then set the intention to connect with that perfect mentor. Take some slow deep breaths and quiet your mind. Sit in the stillness until names, faces, images, or ideas begin to come to mind. If they do not, then revisit your list of criteria and quiet yourself again. If you do not get an immediate image, do not be concerned. Within the week someone will come to mind. Again, if not, you may wish to do some research on the Web or by reading biographies and autobiographies. Trust that your commitment to finding a mentor will be enough to steer you in the right direction.
4. Think about people in your life with whom you feel a connection and whom you would be honored to mentor. Record these names and write down ways in which you can reach out to them and begin the process.